Autonomy

Hello,

My laptop is creaking under all the processing I'm making it do...

It's pretty easy to upgrade RAM yourself right? You just swap the chip for the new one?

Anyone bought RAM in Dubai - I'm guessing Bank Street / Computer Street area will be best?

Any advice / idea on prices for 8GB chip for HP Pavillion

Cheers

mikewot

Go to crucial.com and check to see what you can put in your machine first.
Guide to physically doing it on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNDX3upYe0s

shiva

dead easy to do.
go to computer plaza on bank street, opposite the etisalat business center, along from spinneys, ask around a few places so as to avoid getting totally screwed with a white face price.
re fitting it, depends on laptop but most times its a 5 minute job. just make sure you earth yourself fist and dont touch the contacts on the ram module (handle by sides only)

shiva

oh and do a search online for the exact hp model and ram upgrade to make sure it can be done and what size will fit/be comparable as some laptops are restricted.

Meow

Auto

Mr Meow has done this so give him a call.

scot47

Don't you have servants to do this sort of thing ?

Autonomy

Thanks all!

Here is the computer info from the Crucial scanner



I have 6GB installed, a 4GB and 2GB. This scanner states that 8GB in total is my maximum, though I'm running Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit - so I thought with 2 slots I could use a pair of 8GB DDR3 - i.e. 16GB maximum.

Anyone know anything about this?

Going from 6GB to only 8GB doesn't seem worth it... but to 16GB does...

Cheers again.

mikewot

2 + 4 seems an unusual config however that's quite a lot of RAM. The question is what are you 'processing'? Is it your video card that can't cope or is the processor not handling it?

Autonomy

This is where I might look stupid and have been looking into improving RAM when that might not help...

When shooting events I'll be processing 600+ RAW files (each file is approx 25MB) in Lightroom. This renders previews etc and applies the various settings to the RAW file.

I'll then export the RAW into 3 different JPG sizes.

I think the graphics card is ok, in system monitor the physical memory usage can be maxed out to 100% on occasion.

The rendering of previews slows down my workflow and then when finished and exporting the 3 sets of 600 JPGs can take up to an hour.

I was looking to speed up both of these... maybe a faster drive is required to write the exported JPGs - it is an external with USB 3.0 connection.

Here are the full laptop specs:-

Key Information
Hard Drive Type 2.5" SATA 5400rpm with 8MB Cache
Customer Benefits 750GB
Colour Steel Grey, Metal Finish
Type Laptop
Display & Graphics
Screen Size (in) 15.6
Screen Type LED
Graphics Type Dedicated
Graphics Chipset AMD Radeon HD 6490M (1 GB GDDR5 dedicated)
Active Area Height (mm) No
Active Area Width (mm) No
Processor
Processor Intel® Core™ i7
Processor Model Number i7-2630QM
Processor Speed (GHz) 2
Processor Bus Speed (MHz) 1333
Memory
Hard Drive Capacity 750GB
Memory Type DDR3
Memory Speed PC3-8500 (1066 MHz)
Memory Slots (Free) 0
Memory Slots (Total) 2
Cache Memory 6MB
Card Reader Type Multi card reader
Memory Capacity (RAM) 6GB

weasel decentral

take a look at SSD (solid state drives) might be more helpful than what you are thinking of.

shiva

Hate to say it auto but if your processing that amount of stuff a stupidly priced laptop is an answer. The better option is a desktop, you could probably build one yourself that would do the job for 5-6k aed get a decent graphics card, reasonable sized ssd and a ton of ram.
Image processing is very resource heavy and if exporting via USB that will also slow you down. Build a machine with USB 3 and or Preferably thunderbolt ports. Usb3 is about ten times faster than usb2 and thunderbolt about twice as fast as USB 3

shiva

JuSt looked at the specs again, your hard drive is only 5400 so an ssd would make a big difference but upgrading to an ssd on a laptop can be tricky to impossible depending on the model. Google to see if anyone has done it on your model as the amount of space available will be crucial, if there is space you will need to source an ssd that's the right size and may even involve removing the ssd outer case.
No one of it is that difficult be can be bloody fiddly and hard to source a part to fit a specific sized space.

Autonomy

To be totally honest - I agree. It is on the plan for sure. Plus decent pre-calibrated monitor such as top end Dell Ultrasharp, HP or Eizo.

Couple of things - the cost is not an issue - the availability of a decent desktop off the shelf here is not great I found, but could be wrong. My ideal is a stand alone for processing only.

Second is I'm a bit shit scared of spunking more like potentially 9K for SSD based set up components and self building or getting some bloke in Computer Plaza to build to my specs...

If anyone can help on that that would be cool too.

shiva

Off the shElf here is shite. Go custom built and spend a few weeks planning it. Google ideal desktop specs for image processing, there will be a ton of answers.
If you can build Lego you can build a pc it really is pretty simple to do and again there are a ton of online guides and videos.
No need to go top end on most bits but mid range is worth it. I build a new pc about every 4-5 years using the previous year or two years top end components, saves money but loses very little in performance.
Your build will be somthing like this. I7 CPU at about 3ghz, ssd at say 500gb plus 7200 rpm hdd of 2Tb, mid range graphics card, 16gb ddr3 ram, 550wpower supply and a big ass CPU fan and case fans(or water cool if you can be arsed)
A smaller ssd will cut cost massively. Keep the ssd for the os and Lightroom/ photoshop only and you can still use it for processing images store everything else on th hdd.

I'm a bit out of touch as I'm about due to rebuild my pc but happy to help.

I will say its worth building it yourself though as once done its then a piece of piss to upgrade stuff yourself later when you know how it all goes together. If you have all the parts a pc can be built in well under an hour, Installing the os and software though will take all day

csdf

Whilst Windows 7 can support more memory, your motherboard may not be able to. For instance, my now very old Dell Inspiron can only access a maximum of 6 GB of memory, no matter how much you plug in.